


someone that i used to be/someone that i will be/someone that i am right now

by ImSoSupernova



Category: Ghost Quartet - Malloy, SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Car Accidents, Cheating, F/F, F/M, Multiple Endings, Revenge, Suicide, nonlinear storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 19:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18058490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImSoSupernova/pseuds/ImSoSupernova
Summary: “C-can you make such a thing happen?” Eva stammered.“Eva, darling--” Isak stood up and flourished a hand, and Eva watched with shock as the flames rose with it, bounding and leaping around the pot, impossibly bright. “There is nothing I can’t accomplish--with the right ingredients, of course.”“What ingredients?” Eva asked, breathlessly.“To start--” he counted them off on his fingers. “One pot of honey, one piece of stardust, one secret baptism, and a photo of a ghost.”Eva’s heart sank with each item he listed. It was impossible, a human couldn’t acquire such items. “Then it is impossible,” she murmured sadly. “I could never collect those things. Not in an entire lifetime.”“Maybe not in one, yes,” Isak agreed. “But in many--yes, in many, you could find them all.”





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone!! this is the fic that i wrote for the 2019 skam big bang!! i've been wanting to write this for a while, so i'm really excited to finally have done it! 
> 
> everyone MUST check out the incredible edits that megan (@sargents) made for my fic as part of the big bang! she's so incredibly talented, and i'm so happy to have gotten her as my artist!
> 
> this fic is based on the musical ghost quartet by dave malloy. it's such an amazing show, and i really recommend listening to it while you read this fic! 
> 
> shoutout to bri (@brionbroadway) for being like the only other person in the world who's really into skam AND ghost quartet, and who encouraged me to do this all the way through! and shoutout to leo (@eliotthashands) for being a wonderful beta!!
> 
> i hope you all enjoy!

The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the dingy windows of the pub as Eva pushed through the door, bells jingling faintly behind her. Inside, music thudded softly from the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner of the room, pulsing faintly with light. Eva bobbed her head to the beat a little as she made her way through the room, pushing past dusty old wooden tables and stools. It was early enough that nearly all of them were empty, save for a few hooded-eyed day drinkers slumped over pints, alone. And save for the soft chatter and laughter of a small group gathered around the bar in back. Eva heard them, and felt a grin spread across her face as she hurried over.

“Eva!” Jonas raised his glass to her once she got into earshot. “Welcome, welcome, babe!”

Ingrid--leaning quite into Jonas _ , _ Eva couldn’t help noticing--followed suit, knocking one back in celebration. Isak, the bartender, quit wiping the counter for a second to wave his rag in the air. Eva beamed and slid into the stool beside Jonas, leaning over to give him a kiss on the cheek. It was clear that the three of them had already had a few drinks, despite the early hour. She smiled at Isak and ordered a glass of her favorite whiskey, on the rocks.

“So,” Isak said as he poured, “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Sure has.” Ingrid held out her glass for Isak to refill as well. “A hundred years, at least.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Jonas stuck a cigarette in between his teeth and fumbled with the lighter. 

“112, I think.” Eva snatched the lighter from his fingers and lit the end on the first try. Jonas grinned at her as he took a drag, blowing out a long column of smoke. 

“It’s been a long time,” he said. 

“It always is.” Ingrid swirled the ice cubes in her drink. “A long time. A lot of years. A lot learned. A lot, still, left to learn.”

“Must not have learned that much,” Isak grinned, “if you keep coming back to this shit pub at the edge of the world.”

“Shit pub?” Jonas looked affronted. “This is my  _ favorite _ pub.”

“There’s a reason we keep coming back, Isak.” Eva pushed her glass forward for a refill. “Where else are the drinks this cheap? And the company this good?”

Isak gave an exaggerated bow, and they all cheered. “Well,” he said. “So.” He pulled out another bottle. “Was this time enough? Or are you headed out for more?”

“More, of course!” Eva raised her newly-filled glass. “Always more. More to see, more to do, more to learn, more to  _ be. _ ”

“Will you remember yourself this time?” Ingrid asked. 

Eva shook her head. “Never. I like not remembering myself. How else can you truly be someone else, learn what you don’t yet know?”

Ingrid shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“Fair enough,” Isak echoed. “Maybe I’ll see you out there, this time.” 

Eva, Ingrid, and Jonas clapped excitedly at this pronouncement. 

_ “Alright!”  _ Jonas crowed. “Here’s to 112 years!  _ And _ 112 more.”

“Cheers.” Isak poured off another round of drinks, then raised a glass of his own. “To health!”

“To friends!” Ingrid grinned at Jonas.

“To whiskey!” Eva flung her glass up high.

“To--” Jonas’s grin was so wide he almost couldn’t get the words out, “to all that we do not know.”

They all burst into laughter.  _ “I don’t know, but I’ve been told,” _ Ingrid sang through her giggles.

“Isn’t that true of everything we think we know, anyway?” Isak joked. 

“Or that we think we  _ don’t  _ know,” Eva added. 

Jonas shook his head, eyes closed. “Perfect,” he said, “perfect! To all we don’t know, and to all we will soon know!”

The sound of their four glasses clinking together echoed loudly over the faint music, the sound resonating just a bit longer than normal as the four of them swallowed their drinks.

 

They stayed late, into the early hours of the morning, until Isak ran out of Evan Williams. As they left, one by one, the bell jingled behind them, the remnants of its little song echoing quietly in the still night air.


	2. chapter 1: the camera shop

A bell above the door jingled as Eva entered the shop, camera bag bumping against her hip. Inside it was dimly lit, and smelled faintly of incense or sage--some burning plant. An odd smell for a camera shop.

It was a cramped, dusty little space. The walls were crowded with shelves, surfaces covered with parts for every version of every camera ever. There were digital cameras and polaroids, but most of all, there were film cameras, hundreds of them. Minoltas and Nikons and Pentaxes, Hasselblads and Mamiyas, Kodaks. And even older models, gigantic cameras with flashbulbs and cranks that looked like they were from the 1910s. Eva had to stop for a moment to gawk at such a collection. She sneezed a few times against the dust. 

“Excuse me?”

The woman’s voice came from behind her, and Eva jumped. For a second, she’d almost forgotten where she was, why she was here. “H-hello,” she stuttered out.

She turned around. The woman who had spoken was pretty, with soft, wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes. She looked young, too--couldn’t be more than a year or two older than Eva, probably. Yet there was something about her, some sort of sadness in her eyes or  _ aura  _ about her, that made her seem older, wiser beyond her years. She made Eva feel completely unnerved.

“Can I help you?” The girl asked.

“Umm--” Eva felt the weight of her camera bag again and remembered why she was here. “I hope so. I--I lost my camera, see.”

“Oh.” The girl’s face folded in sympathy. “Did someone steal it?”

Eva shook her head quickly. Her memories of the event were fractured, blurred. She didn’t want to remember them. “It got--smashed.”

“Well, maybe we can repair it?” The girl offered a hand.

Eva closed her eyes against the swirling memories, the reminder of what had happened, what she’d done. She opened them again, and the girl was still there, eyes soft and kind, hand still outstretched. Something about her helpfulness, her sympathy, her utter ignorance of what Eva had been through pissed Eva off. “It got smashed and lost,” she said shortly. “The pieces are lost. They’re gone.”

_ It was all gone. _

“I’m sorry.” The girl withdrew her hand and began to move towards a dusty glass counter in the back. “Here...have some whiskey.”

_ Whiskey?  _ Eva blinked, stunned. The shop suddenly felt too cramped, too dark and dusty. But, as if compelled by an invisible force, her feet moved, and they took her back deeper into the shop, to the counter where the shop girl had laid out two glasses and a dusty bottle of amber liquid. As she moved, her eyes caught onto something displayed on the back wall. Something distinctly not camera-related. It was a fiddle and bow, mounted next to each other. The sight of it was so surprising, so jarring. Eva felt strangely queasy looking at it.

“Here.” The girl pressed one of the glasses into her hand. Eva took a sip of it automatically, savoring how the liquid burned its way down her throat. “It was a real camera, yes?” The shop girl asked her. “Not a phone?”

“Oh, no.” Eva shook her head vigorously. “I don’t--I do not like phones.”

“Me neither.” The girl finished her glass, then refilled it. The liquid splashed as she spoke. “I’ll get you all set up with a new camera in just a moment. But sit first. Drink a bit.” She looked Eva directly in the eyes. “You need to take care of yourself.”

Eva shivered involuntarily. The room suddenly seemed cold. She took a sip of whiskey to keep her warm. “T-thank you,” she stammered.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Eva could feel the girl’s soft eyes on her as she drank. She looked away. There was something about this girl, something incredibly unnerving yet almost  _ familiar.  _ She didn’t like it. She tried to focus on the fiddle instead, but that almost made her feel more unsettled.

“Are you traveling?” The girl asked carefully. 

She held out the bottle, glancing at Eva’s empty glass. Eva held it out without thinking. “Yes,” she said. “From Bergen.”

“Oh!” The girl exclaimed. “I’ve been there! They’ve got that cool opera house.”

“Umm…” Eva felt embarrassed correcting her. “That’s Oslo.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “I get them mixed up.”

Eva didn’t know how to respond to that. She sipped from her freshly-filled glass.

“Did you grow up there?” The girl asked.

Eva squirmed in her seat. The girl’s voice was soft, but her eyes were dark and penetrating. Her questions were beginning to make Eva uncomfortable.  _ But she was just a young camera store owner,  _ she told herself.  _ How bad could she be? _

“Yeah,” she answered finally. “When I was a kid.”

“That’s nice,” the girl said thoughtfully. Her eyes stared at something over Eva’s shoulder “It’s nice to have roots.” 

Eva wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she nodded, shifting a little in her seat. “What about you?” she found herself asking. “Have you been here long.”

The girl nodded seriously. “This store has been in my family for four generations.”

“Wow,” Eva said.

“See that fiddle on the wall?” The girl gestured at it with one hand. The other still held her glass. “It belonged to my great-grandmother. Her name was Eva.”

Eva’s stomach jolted.  _ What are the odds… _

“That’s my name,” she said slowly.

The girl smiled, and that smile released a slow coil of dread in Eva’s stomach. “It’s a beautiful name,” she said. 

“I guess,” Eva said. She wanted to get her new camera. She wanted to leave. But she sat there, frozen to her seat, gazing into the girl’s eyes. It was so dark in the shop. It seemed as though the world outside had ceased to exist.

Finally, she asked, “The color’s so light. What’s it made of?”

“An old breastbone!” The girl said cheerfully, as though she was commenting on the weather. 

“Creepy,” Eva said before she could stop herself.

“It was the breastbone of her sister,” the girl continued, as though that made things any less creepy. “Her name was Ingrid.”

_ “Ingrid…” _ Eva repeated softly.

That name...that  _ name. _

Something about that name struck something in Eva, as though it was the echo of some distant person that she  _ should  _ remember...but didn’t. 

She shook her head. This was just a creepy fiddle inside a creepy camera shop, with a creepy shop owner sitting right in front of her. That was all. It wasn’t great, but that was all.

The shop girl opened the bottle again and refilled both their glasses. “I’ll tell you the story…” 


	3. chapter 2: the story

  1. _the sisters_



 

_ Ingrid and Eva lived alone together, in a small cottage on a cliff by the sea. They were sisters; Ingrid the eldest and Eva the younger. They had had a mother once, but she was gone now, buried in the rocky, salty soil of their garden. And they had had a father, too, but he had been gone even longer--run off to escape the life of the cottage for the ocean, the distant New World. He had left when Eva was still very young, and now only Ingrid was left to miss him on occasion, staring, as her mother once did, out the windows at the deep, endless sea. _

_ Eva and Ingrid kept to themselves for the most part, and rarely travelled beyond the woods that enclosed the cliffs. When the tide was low, they wandered down a rocky path to the beach, where they gathered pretty shells, rocks, and sea glass. And then, every Saturday, they took the finest of them to the market of a local village and sold them, using the money they made to buy bread and cheese.  _

_ Besides these weekly sojourns on the mile-long path into town, the two sisters kept to themselves and stayed near their cottage; making their collections and tending to their small garden. They would talk sometimes, tell each other stories that they had read or heard from folks at the market. New stories and stories that they had heard many times before, interrupting each other playfully to remind the other of a detail she had forgotten. When they grew weary of storytelling they would sing, and their high, lovely voices echoed over the cliffside and through the trees.  _

_ The people in town were wary of the sisters, and whispered about them as they watched their stall at the market. Some murmured that they were fae, other called them witches, sirens, spirits. How else were they able to find such shapely shells, such fine rocks, such smooth seaglass? But really, they were just two sisters, living and working with each other, trying to survive. _

 

  1. _the man in the trees_



 

_ The two sisters had one neighbor, and he visited them on occasion. _

_ They knew him only as the Astronomer, and he lived in a treehouse in the forest where he observed the stars through an enormous telescope. He made sketches and notes of all he saw, and he sometimes brought them with him when he came to see the sisters on colder nights, stopping in for a warm meal and a bit of company. _

_ “Why do you look at the stars?” Ingrid asked him one night. “Doesn’t it frighten you so, seeing how vast and empty the sky is?” _

_ Eva shook her head at her sister’s foolishness, gazing up at the Astronomer as he answered. “Not at all. When I look in the telescope I am certain of the universe, the great existence of all and everything. And the stars--well, they just fill me with such wonder. I don’t know what I would do if I could not see them.” _

_ Eva sometimes dreamt of what it would be like to gaze into his telescope and see the universe for herself. _

 

_ The Astronomer had travelled to many distant lands, and sometimes he would tell the sisters stories from his travels.  _

_ “There’s a man in Iran,” he began one day, as the wind howled wildly outside the window, “who says he can talk to ghosts.” _

_ “Talk to ghosts?” Eva gasped. She leaned forward to hear him more clearly, to be closer to him. “How does he do it?” _

_ “Yes.” The Astronomer nodded, taking a sip from his glass of whiskey. “And the way that he does it--he hasn’t spoken to anyone alive in 42 years! All he does everyday is stare at a wall, and then he’s one with the universe.” He stopped to give Eva a long, meaningful glance. “He says that every soul that ever died is living in the shadows of the sky.” _

_ “And what do you think?” Eva whispered, leaning in ever closer. _

_ The Astronomer shrugged, and took another drink. “I have never seen anything I couldn’t blame on my mind. So I don’t believe in ghosts.” _

_ “Hmmm…” Eva hummed. She didn’t ask him anything more. _

 

_ At the end of each of his visits, the Astronomer asked for a song. And Eva and Ingrid would sing to him: old lullabies, bouncy sea shanties, mournful love songs. He would sit in his chair with his glass of whiskey and his eyes closed, and he would shake their hands and thank them when they were done. “Lord,” he said, “I wish I could sing like that.” _

 

_ When she was younger, Eva found the Astronomer funny and entertaining and looked forward to his visits. But the older she grew, the more she began to live for them. She looked forward to bad weather, to the nights of howling wind and rain and sleet. Her heart skipped as she watched him approach their house on those days, his dark curls buffeted by the wind.  _

_ She sat with him and saw his drawings and she heard his stories. And although she could not see the faraway lands, could not understand what the drawings meant, she wanted more than anything to look through his telescope. And perhaps, when she allowed herself, blushing, to think about the possibility, she wished she could hold his hand, too. _

 

_ iii. the telescope _

 

_ It was often foggy where they lived, the Astronomer would complain. The sea spray and the cloudy skies meshed together, and the cliffside and forest were often shrouded in a deep misty haze. “It’s not the best place for an observatory,” he said ruefully. “But on nights where the fog lifts and there’s no clouds in the sky--well, you’ve got to see those stars.” _

_ “I’d love to,” Eva breathed, but he never seemed to hear her. _

_ Eva could see the stars herself, of course. On clear nights she would stand on the cliff with the sea roaring below her, and look up, see the distant lights of unknown galaxies and universes billions of lightyears away. Sometimes she wondered if there were others out there in space, looking back at her. Perhaps she could see them if she looked through the telescope. Perhaps they could see her, too.  _

_ But the person she really wanted to see her lived only a few yards away, in a tree in the forest. On these starry nights she could see the lights from his house shining through the trees for hours on hours. She imagined the Astronomer staying up all night, looking through his telescope and scrawling his endless notes and charts as he deciphered the secrets of the universe. She wanted to be with him, wanted it so much that some nights she felt she could burst. _

_ So she began to write herself, on scraps of paper that she saved in her room. Poems about the stars and the planets and the vastness of the universe, but most of all, about him. About her longing to see the universe up close, and for him to see her.  _

_ She did not share her poems with anyone, not even her sister, but she wrapped them up in small envelopes and decorated them with flowers. And she held them close at night, when everyone else was asleep, curled up with them right next to her heart. _

 

_ One day, she forgot to put them away.  _

_ It was a cold night, the first of many as winter drew near, and, as per usual, the Astronomer had come to call. She and Ingrid had busied themselves in the kitchen to cook up a warm meal for all of them as he sat outside, when suddenly he called for her.  _

_ “Eva, would you come here?” _

_ Eva’s heart leapt into her throat. He had never done that before, rarely even called her by name. She tried not to run into the other room. “Yes, Astronomer?” _

_ He was holding an envelope in one hand and a small scrap of paper in the other, which he thrust towards her. “Is this yours?” he asked.  _

_ Eva’s hands shook as she reached out to take the paper. “Y-yes,” she stammered. “It’s--nothing, really, just a writing exercise--” _

_ “It’s brilliant,” the Astronomer interrupted emphatically. “It’s the greatest poem I’ve ever read. Do you have more?” _

_ Eva could feel the heat rising in her face, coloring her cheeks, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this happy before. “Yes!” she cried, and then winced. “I mean, yes, I do. Would you like to read them?” _

_ “I’d love to,” he said.  _

_ Eva ran over to her bed faster than she ever run before. And she brought back her wads of envelopes and watched as he opened each of them and read each poem, mouthing the words silently. He read them and then slipped them back into his envelopes, stacking them neatly beside him. And when he was done, when the last envelope was placed on the pile, he turned and looked at her and said, “Eva, would you ever be interested in looking at the stars through my telescope?” _

 

_ The Astronomer accessed his treehouse by a series of metal rungs nailed into the trunk of the tree. Eva scrambled up after him awkwardly, trying not to look down. When she finally reached the top, hoisting herself up as gracefully as she could, she saw it. The telescope. _

_ It was copper and small, less grand than she had originally imagined, but still fascinatingly complex with all sorts of wheels and levers hanging off of it. Eva couldn’t imagine what purpose they all served, but she was sure they were all important.  _

_ The rest of the room was sparse, furnished only with a hammock, a few small cushions, a bookshelf, and a desk, covered in stacks of paper. And there were charts hanging on the wall, full of circles and ellipses and flecks of gold paint. Eva felt like she could stare at them for hours, at the spirals and coils of the universe. There was one thing she didn’t understand, though.  _

_ “How do you look at the stars inside?” she asked, staring at the darkness of the ceiling above. _

_ “Ah.” The Astronomer reached out to pull at a crank fixed to the wall. There was a terrible grinding, shrieking sound, and Eva watched in awe as the ceiling split in the middle and retracted into itself, like an egg hatching. Above them the stars shone brighter than Eva had ever seen, tiny fires burning their way into the back of her eyes.  _

_ Steps behind her made her jump. “You ready?” the Astronomer asked.  _

_ Eva nodded, and shivered despite herself. _

_ The Astronomer began fiddling with the levers and wheels of his telescope. “New moon,” he murmured to himself. “Perfect night for stargazing.” _

_ Eva stood there, motionless, watching as he spun the wheels and swung the levers in all directions, stopping every once in a while to peer through the eyepiece. Finally, he stepped back and smiled. “Ready,” he said. _

_ Eva approached the telescope, legs wobbly. She had dreamt of this moment so often; now that it was here, she felt shaky with anticipation, frightened, almost. She had stared up at the stars so long that she was afraid of what she might see if she if she looked closer. _

_ The Astronomer showed her to the eyepiece, and the focus beside it. “If it’s too blurry, spin this wheel,” he said. _

_ His arms were reaching around her to show her. Eva felt her heart, beating fast in her chest. Slowly, carefully, she lifted her eye to the lens. And she saw. _

_ “What do you see?” he whispered, right in her ear. _

_ “I see…” Eva’s voice hitched in her throat. “I see a red star.” _

_ The Astronomer nodded. “Antares. It’s a red hypergiant star. 4900 light-years away.” _

_ “Wow,” Eva breathed. She looked again, at that soft red glow and the swirling silvery galaxy around it, so far away from the two of them. And then, in that moment, she felt a poem come into her mind, her heart, her mouth. And before she could think otherwise, she began to recite it.  _ **_“I see fire in the dark, rage against the void. I see every time man cried out, and raised his sword against God.”_ **

_ “Wow.” He was closer to her know. She could feel his arms brush against her hips. “That’s good,” he whispered. “That’s really good. Now look--” he reached over to change the angle of the telescope. “Now look again--and tell me what you see.” _

_ Obediently, Eva leaned over to peer through the lens. She fiddled with the focus for a moment, and then she saw. “I see a blue star,” she said. _

_ “Mmm hmm,” he murmured. “Groombridge 1830, also called Argelander’s Star. It’s a class G8 subdwarf--a member of the galactic halo.” _

_ The star was smaller than Antares but larger than the ones around it, glowing brightly, coldly blue as it gazed back at her. So far away, so lonely, so clear.  _ **_“I see mothers weeping in chairs,”_ ** _ she began,  _ **_“clutching their shawls in mourning. Everything is lost, all is gone--and she tries to find the joy in life, but she is wasting away.”_ **

_ “Wow.” The Astronomer withdrew for a moment, and Eva heard a strange sound, almost like paper crinkling. But then he was back, and this time, Eva felt, he  _ was  _ pulling her closer. She let herself lean back for a moment, melt into his chest. Then he reached out and shifted the telescope once more. “Now look,” he murmured against her neck, “and tell me what you see…” _

_ Eva did not want to lean away from him, but she obeyed. “I see--” her voice caught in her throat for reasons she didn’t quite understand. “I see two stars.” _

_ He leaned over her shoulder to look through himself. “That’s Sigma Orionis AB--a binary star.” _

_ “Two stars…” Eva murmured, “lost in time.” _

_ “Eva--” the Astronomer murmured. His voice sounded strange. _

_ “Yes?” Eva breathed. She turned to face him. _

_ He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then, he opened it again. “I love the way you see the world,” he blurted out suddenly. “I love the way your soul sings. I wish that I could sing like you.” _

_ Eva gasped, felt her cheeks burning, and opened her mouth to respond. But suddenly he was pulling her close, pressing his mouth clumsily against hers. Eva felt frozen for a moment, shocked. Then, she kissed him back, pulling him closer to her, running her fingers through his dark, curly hair. His arms snaked his way around her waist, pulling her hips into his. He was holding her, and she was holding him, and they were in his treehouse and Eva had just looked through his telescope, and it was all she had ever wanted. _

_ And above them, the stars were shining, billions of light-years away. _

 

  1. _the astronomy journal_



 

_ That was how things were now. _

_ Eva would spend her days with her sister, as before, but once it was evening she hurried to the treehouse in the woods to look at the stars and her Astronomer. And every night, she composed poems with him, and every night he praised her and her works. And he kissed her. _

_ Eva had never been happier. _

 

_ Eva could never really tell what her sister thought of their relationship. _

_ She knew Ingrid knew, had to know. It was impossible to hide her many trips into the forest. But Ingrid never spoke to her about it more than just to say goodbye as she left at night, and hello when she came back in the morning. Eva sometimes wondered what Ingrid did in the time she was gone, in their little cottage by herself. Perhaps she was looking at the stars, too. But Eva didn’t think much of it. She knew her sister was fine without her. _

 

_ “Hello, Eva.” _

_ The Astronomer grinned at her as she pulled herself up through the door of the treehouse, easily now with practice.  _

_ “Hi,” she grinned back. She reached up to pull him in for a kiss, but he laughed and stepped away nimbly. _

_ “Come on,” he said, “let’s take a look at what’s happening up there tonight.” _

_ “Okay.” Eva followed him over to the telescope. _

_ It was overcast that night. The cloud cover was thick, and the sky was menacingly dark and heavy. There would be no stars to see that night. It had been cloudy on nights where Eva had visited before, of course, but this time, she sensed something was different. “Oh well,” she said, stepping away from the telescope and closer to the Astronomer, “maybe some other night.” _

_ “Sure,” he said, but she could sense he was agitated, shifting his weight from side to side.  _

_ “What’s wrong?” Eva asked him, reaching over to take his hand. “You seem troubled.” _

_ “Hmm?” He turned to look at her. “Oh, nothing, nothing...listen, Eva, if there’s nothing to look at tonight, you should probably get going, right?” He gave a short laugh. “Ingrid must get lonely sometimes, with you away every night.” _

_ Eva felt a sharp jolt in her stomach at these words. Something, she realized, was not right, not right at all. “What?” she asked. “Why? Do you not want me to stay?” _

_ He shrugged. “I don’t know. But you’re here every night. Sometimes I just need some alone time.” _

_ “O-okay,” Eva stammered out. His explanation made sense, she told herself. But she still felt uneasy.  _

_ “Best be going,” he said.  _

_ “I-I guess.” _

_ Eva made her way down the ladder, slowly and carefully. Her legs shook for reasons she couldn’t quite understand. _

 

_ After that night, things changed. _

_ The Astronomer no longer visited the sisters, no longer asked Eva to come with him to look at his telescope. Eva wanted more than anything to go and see him again, in their own quiet universe of the treehouse. But whenever she dared to come knock at his door, he turned her away. “It’s cloudy again tonight,” he said, or “The telescoping is malfunctioning, and I need to fix it.” Eva wanted to believe what he said was the truth, but she knew her gut, and it told her that it wasn’t. Something had happened to them, something was wrong. _

_ She spent her days in a kind of quiet agony, working alongside her sister but distracted, staring out at the sea. Her life was not how she had wanted it to be, but all she could do was sit and wonder what had possibly gone wrong.  _

_ One night, Ingrid asked her, kindness and worry bright in her eyes, what was troubling her. And in that moment, Eva told her everything, falling into her sister’s arms and weeping into her chest. “He no longer loves me,” she whispered, “and I don’t know why.”  _

_ And Ingrid held her tight, comforting her all that night.  _

 

_ The next day, she decided she’d had enough. _

_ She got up early with the birds, singing in the pale morning air. And then, she spotted him. The Astronomer, wandering his way down the path into town. Eva watched him go until she could no longer see him, and then suddenly her heart was seized with a powerful desire to KNOW, to figure out what she had missed.  _

_ She slipped out of her house and into the woods. _

 

_ The rungs of the ladder were slick with dew as she climbed, and Eva forced herself to move carefully, her heart pounding in her chest. She reached up to push through the door, and felt her stomach jolt with nerves as it flew back at her touch, settling on the floor above. She pulled herself up. _

_ The room was as it had been before, mostly. The telescope sat on one side, the roof closed now. The hammock was strung in its usual place, the cushions tossed to one side. The dust on the bookshelf had clear fingerprints where the Astronomer must have removed or replaced books, and the desk was covered in its usual pile of papers. _

_ Those papers...Eva had never looked at them closely before. She assumed they must be charts, drawings, graphs, images she could barely understand. But she approached it anyway, looking to see if anything could be found in these stacks. _

_ There were not charts, or graphs, or drawings, Eva realized. They were stacks of newspapers, each bearing the same title:  _ The Astronomer’s Journal.  _ Eva picked one copy up and began to page through it. Inside, she found the graphs and drawings she had originally expected. But there was more to them. There was writing, too, articles about new findings, sightings of comets and planets and constellations. There was a small crossword puzzle on the corner of the page, and Eva recognized the Astronomer’s neat script filling it out.  _

_ And then--on the last page, Eva stopped. It was a section titled:  _ “Words from the Stars”.  _ It did not contain scientific articles or opinions, but what looked like a selection of poems about the universe. She stopped to read one: “‘Antares: It is fire in the dark, rage against the void. It is every time man cried out and raised his sword--’” Eva’s voice caught in her throat. She read the last part of the phrase carefully, not wanting to believe it was true. “‘--and raised his sword against God…’” _

_ It was her poem, the one she had composed that first night with the Astronomer. Eva grabbed another newspaper and flipped to the back, reading it frantically. And then another one. And another one. It was all the same: pieces that she had written, published under the title of “the Astronomer of the Woode”. _

_ He had been stealing her work. _

 

  1. _the betrayal_



 

_ Eva barely registered leaving the treehouse. _

_ The rungs in the tree, once so terrifying, passed quickly through her hands as she lowered herself down, barely bothering to glance down.  Her head was filled with a blank white fire, hot with rage and sadness and tears, at the Astronomer for using her, stealing her poetry that was so personal to her; at herself, for baring her soul to him so  openly, so foolishly, for daring to believe that he would ever truly love her.  _

_ She stormed through the woods, twigs crackling like gunshots under her feet, thorns and branches tugging and scratching at her arms and legs and face. She didn’t care, relished the pain, almost, the sharp stabs and scrapes just reflecting the awful torn-upness she felt inside.  _

_ She didn’t know how long she spent pushing her way through the woods, didn’t know if she was following the path that would lead back to her house. She just kept going, leaving a small trail of destruction in her wake. Until she was stopped in her tracks by the sound of a human voice, horrible in its familiarity-- _

_ “Come look at the stars, dear Ingrid…” _

_ She turned abruptly in the direction of the voice, crashing her way into a clearing, where she saw--she saw-- _

_ No. It couldn’t be. It COULDN’T. Eva closed her eyes, and opened them again. She saw-- _

_ The Astronomer. And her sister. Embracing each other, there in the quiet, grassy clearing, far away from any prying eyes in the cottage. Eva gasped aloud, and the couple broke apart, turned toward her. _

_ “Eva!” Ingrid cried. _

_ “How--” Eva spluttered, fury and despair like she’d never known rising inside her. “How COULD you, sister, how COULD you?” _

_ “He--” Ingrid glanced miserably at her lover, then at her sister. “He likes my singing, that is ALL.” _

_ “Wait, Eva, WE were never--” The Astronomer began, but Eva interrupted him, her anger spilling out of her like poison. _

_ “I always knew you were shallow!” she spat at him. “I always knew you didn’t really know me, that you didn’t believe me, that I bored you! I--” She broke for a moment. “I always knew I wasn’t pretty enough to hold you…I always knew you’d go with someone smarter than me.” She felt tears, horrible tears welling up in her eyes, and she forcibly blinked them away. “I always knew your mind was elsewhere. I always knew you were a SNOB. You, with your head in the stars, you and your books. You and your FUCKING books. I am not a game, you know?” she spat at him. “I’m not some fucking puzzle for you to figure out. I am not a PUZZLE. Why don’t you just--” Eva felt wild. She felt the spit flying from her mouth, and she relished it. “Why don’t you just fuck all your books? Why don’t you just FUCK all your FUCKING books, and we’ll see who’s sorry! WE’LL SEE!”  _

_ The Astronomer opened his mouth, but didn’t speak. He sat there, gaping like a fish, not believing what she’d just said. She barely believed it herself. But she loved it anyway. “Finally you’re speechless,” she sneered at him. “And YOU--” she turned to face her sister, who shrunk away from her gaze. “I am not done with YOU, sister.” _

_ Eva spat on the ground in front of them. Then she turned to leave. _

 

  1. _the deal_



 

_ Eva ran. _

_ The wild whiteness of before was back, tenfold. Her rage engulfed every part of her, consuming her heart, her mind, her stomach, obscuring her vision until she could barely see what was in front of her. The person that she had trusted more than anyone, had confided in endlessly, had believed when she comforted her, wiped her tears, told her that it was all okay--that person had betrayed her. Her sister had betrayed her. And in the worst way possible--she had taken the man who had PRETENDED TO LOVE EVA, HAD USED HER AND STOLEN HER POETRY, HAD BROKEN EVA’S HEART, she had taken that man as her lover.  _

_ Eva could not think of a punishment great enough, an act of revenge that would impart on Ingrid a fraction of the pain and turmoil she felt now. So, she ran, with her blinding rage burning through her, until the ground fell out from under her. And she tumbled down, through leaves and twigs and rocks, until she reached the bottom.  _

_ “Are you okay?” a voice asked.  _

_ Eva ached. She twisted painfully to one side, to try to look up and see who had spoken. _

_ It was a man, a thin, tall man, with a mop of blond curls on his head. He stood above her, looking more curious than sympathetic. _

_ “No,” she said. “I will never be okay again.” _

_ “Never?” he asked her. “Surely, there is something.” _

_ Eva pushed herself up into a sitting position. Her body screamed in protest. Perhaps it was unwise to share with a stranger, but right now, this was the only thing she could think about, her brain screaming it over and over again. “There is one thing, and only one thing. Revenge.” _

_ The man nodded. “Ahh,” he said. “A noble quest, revenge. Here, let’s get you on your feet, and then we’ll see how I can help you.” _

_ He offered her his hand. Eva glanced at him. He was a stranger. But he had offered to help her. He had called her  _ noble _.  _

_ Eva took his hand. _

_ The man introduced himself as Isak, and he lead her carefully through the woods and around the ravine until they came upon a small hut on a shelf of the cliff overlooking the sea. Inside, it was smokey and dark, with a fire in the fireplace and a large round pot bubbling over it. Eva found herself shivering despite the heat of the room. _

_ “So…” Isak pulled out two chairs from a small wooden table in the center of the room. “Who has wronged you so much that the only thing you long for now is revenge?” _

_ Eva sat down heavily next to him. “...my sister,” she said hesitantly, “and my--my no-longer lover. I suppose you can understand what happened from that.” _

_ Isak nodded, and furrowed his brow. “Terrible,” he said sympathetically. “Terrible. One of the worst sorts of betrayal.” _

_ “Exactly!” Eva nodded vigorously. She felt strangely elated now, hearing this stranger echoing her thoughts back at her.  _

_ Isak looked at her seriously. “They deserve to suffer for it.” _

_ Eva leaned in. “They do,” she breathed. “But what can I do?” _

_ Isak spread his hands. “Anything. Anything your heart desires. The worst, cruellest punishment--I can give it to you. Tell me what you want to happen to them. Tell me what they deserve.” _

_ Eva’s heart thudded in her chest. His words, the heaviness of the smoke, the flickering of the fire--they intoxicated her. She felt as though she were flying above the clouds.  _

_ “I wish--” she murmured, and paused. What  _ did  _ she wish? What punishment could  _ possibly  _ suit the injury inflicted on her? She heard, faintly, a seagull caw outside, and was struck with an inspiration. The plan came to her all at once, words tumbling out of her mouth. “I wish that my lover--the Astronomer--would be mauled by a great and terrible beast. And my sister, my cruel, heartless sister, be transformed into a black crow, and trapped in a cave with his corpse, without food until she starves and has no choice but to peck out the eyes of her lover and eat them!” _

_ She gasped when she finished, both shocked and pleasured at the words she had just spoken. Isak smiled at her, his teeth glittering faintly in the firelight. “Delicious,” he mused. “Yes, that would work quite nicely.” _

_ “C-can you make such a thing happen?” Eva stammered. _

_ “Eva, darling--” Isak stood up and flourished a hand, and Eva watched with shock as the flames rose with it, bounding and leaping around the pot, impossibly bright. “There is nothing I can’t accomplish--with the right ingredients, of course.” _

_ “What ingredients?” Eva asked, breathlessly. _

_ “To start--” he counted them off on his fingers. “One pot of honey, one piece of stardust, one secret baptism, and a photo of a ghost.” _

_ Eva’s heart sank with each item he listed. It was impossible, a human couldn’t acquire such items. “Then it  _ is  _ impossible,” she murmured sadly. “I could never collect those things. Not in an entire lifetime.” _

_ “Maybe not in one, yes,” Isak agreed. “But in many--yes, in many, you could find them all.” _

_ “How do you mean?” Eva whispered. _

_ “Come here.” Isak beckoned. _

_ Eva rose and moved toward him uncertainly. He grasped her hand. “Is this truly what you want, Eva, more than anything else?” _

_ For a moment, Eva faltered. But then she remembered those papers on the table, the sight of her sister, her would-be protector wrapped in the arms of the man that had spurned her. “Yes,” she said firmly. “Yes.” _

_ “Then I give you what you need to accomplish your goal,” Isak murmured, and in this remark Eva heard a sound as though not just Isak but several other voices were speaking along with him. The fire leapt in the fireplace, the flames dazzling her eyes until she could no longer see.  _

_ And then in a rush of wind and heat and embers, she was borne away--from her body, from the cliff, from this life. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two pieces that Megan made are both based on this chapter!! You can find the GORGEOUS edits [here](https://sargents.tumblr.com/post/183353720316/here-is-my-first-contribution-to-the) and [here](https://sargents.tumblr.com/post/183353736221/my-second-work-for-skambigbang-part-one)!!! Be sure to check out her other edits too, she's so incredibly talented!


	4. chapter 3: the pot of honey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for descriptions of PTSD and assisted suicide in this chapter

Ingrid lit a cigarette and leaned up against a wall. Above, the sky was cloudy, and through the sour smell of the city and her smoke, she thought she could detect a hint of rain. Or maybe she was just fooling herself. Maybe it was a bright, clear evening, and the foul smog and dirt of the city just hid it from her. Ingrid took a long, deep drag from her cigarette. It didn't make a difference, anyway.

Her foot bumped against something, sending it skittering into the street in front of her. She looked down to examine what she’d struck. It was a small jar of honey, probably fallen from a vendor’s cart. Perfectly intact, and ready for the taking. When she held it up to the light, the liquid inside seemed to glow golden in the dying light of the day. It seemed...almost too perfect. Deliberate. Like someone had left it there for her to find.

Ingrid couldn’t remember the last time she’d had honey, or anything as sweet.

She exhaled a perfect ring of smoke, watching it hang gently in the air for a moment before a sudden wind snatched it away. The jar weighed down her other hand, and, for a moment, Ingrid almost thought that she might smile. Almost. But the deliberateness of that wind, the cold approach of night--they drove any thoughts of happiness from her mind. These only meant one thing: her ghosts were nearing. 

They usually came at night--but not always. In they crept while she lay in her bunk, whispering in her ears, shaking her from her dreams. Grabbing at her hands, her hair, her toes. Other times, they came for her in the streets, while she sat in the canteen, in the toilet. They shoved at her shoulders and howled in her eyes and cried, cried, cried.  _ Why?  _ they always seemed to ask.  _ Why me? Why this? Why us?  _

_ I don't know,  _ she always wanted to shout,  _ I don't know why you should die and I should live! I don't know why I should have to take!  _ But she could never speak when they came. Or, they never listened.

She wasn't the only one in her regiment that had ghosts, she knew. She could hear the others in their bunks at night, writhing and crying out in their sleep. In the morning, some of them would be gone, entangled in their bed sheets and the rafters, or spread out on the cobblestones of the streets below. She felt no pity for them, she did not have the time for that, but she understood them. In the end, they were all just trying to live with the ghosts that they had created. But some of them were better at it than others. Ingrid was just one of them, all though she sometimes wished she wasn't.

This had been going on for so long that Ingrid no longer felt any fear at the prospect of her ghosts; their moans, their howls, their icy cold fingers. 

Truth be told, she didn't feel anything at all. 

 

“Hey there, soldier.” 

Ingrid looked up to see who had spoken. It was a girl, a beautiful girl with long, wavy copper hair and a tall, graceful figure. In that moment, she let her heart ache at this sight. But then the wind came again, harder this time, and she pushed it down. It was cold, and she was so tired. “What do you want?” she asked.

The girl edged closer. “You look sad,” she said softly.

She was beautiful, but Ingrid wasn’t having it. “I am a soldier,” she said simply. “And as a soldier, I’ve gotten used to death.”

“That is sad,” the girl breathed. Then, she said, “Let me take you out.” 

Ingrid’s breath caught in her throat. “Sorry?” she asked.

“You know,” the girl said. “Take you out. Get a nice hot meal, you look so very cold. Go dancing, perhaps.”

Something deep inside Ingrid stirred, something that had long remained dormant. But again, the wind howled, harder this time, and she said, “I can't. If my officers see me--”

The girl moved close enough to Ingrid that she could almost feel her breath. She placed a hand on Ingrid’s elbow, running it down her arm until she reached her fingers. “I know places where they will never find you.”

The wind howled, more insistently, but it was not enough to cool the heat rising inside Ingrid. She thought of the alternative, her night alone in bed with her ghosts swirling around her, holding sleep hostage. She thought of her future, the bleak option of only ghosts and more ghosts. And she looked at the girl in front of her, and she said, “Alright.”

 

The girl held Ingrid’s hand and pulled her along, turning around at times to grin at her. The streets were dirty and crowded, full of merchants peddling mysterious wares Ingrid didn’t dare touch, and people beckoning at them from darkened alleys. The place frightened Ingrid, but it exhilarated her too. There was an electric, dangerous feel about them. 

True to her word, the girl took Ingrid to a dance hall, and Ingrid did not believe that her superior officers would come anywhere near it. It was a snug, hole-in-the-wall place, tucked away along those narrow, dimly-lit streets. The inside was as dark and dingy as the outside, and loud with music and laughter as carefree as Ingrid never could be. It was perfect.

They settled on two stools at the bar, and the girl ordered Ingrid a drink, something rich and fruity that burned its way down her throat, made her eyes and ears and feelings and everything  _ sharper  _ somehow, bouncing  back and forth around around her brain. Her eyes cast over to the dance floor, and she realized that the couples were not just men and women dancing together, but also men and men and women and women. This realization set a thrill through her, of both excitement and a bit of fear, too. 

The girl saw her looking and grinned at her. “Want to dance?”

_ Dance… _

The music was loud, and the drink was warm in her stomach. The girl’s smile was so bright, so confident, so beautiful. And these crowded, hidden streets seemed so far away from her barracks, her commanders--even her ghosts, which haunted her so, didn’t howl in that moment. One song ended and another began, slow and smooth, strings and a horn that wailed with a bit of longing. 

Ingrid reached out, and took the girl’s offered hand. 

 

Ingrid first held the girl at arms-length, afraid to get too close, to touch her. But as the music flowed, arced and crescendoed and dipped and bobbed, she found herself growing closer, leaning into her, resting her head on her shoulder and linking her arms around her waist. They swayed together, on that dance floor, and for the first time in years, she allowed herself to relax, to let go, to  _ feel _ again. 

After that slow song came a fast one, with a jazzy tempo and a strong swing, and they started moving faster along with it, the girl moving closer to her, pressing her hips against hers. Ingrid closed her eyes and moved along with her, letting the music and the rhythm and the feeling of a girl, a  _ girl holding her, touching her, _ take her away. And they stayed on that dance floor, song after song, swaying and dancing and bouncing around, moving and feeling each other’s bodies and forgetting everything else in the entire world besides each other entirely. Ingrid could almost cry with the beauty of it all.

Finally, sweaty and exhilarated and laughing, the girl pulled her outside, the two of them taking a moment to cool off in the fresh air. Ingrid lit a cigarette, and offered one to the girl, who politely declined. “Can I say something...foolish?” she asked.

Ingrid shrugged. “Sure,” she said.

“What if I told you…” the girl murmured. “That this feels special...people say love is just chemicals, but this feels like  _ more  _ than this, you know, like it’s just me and you on this earth and...and all the angels in heaven have worked to bring us together, to raise us above the world and time and all mortal devices...like we could rise above the ashes and dirt of this cruel, cold world. Because, you are  _ me.” _

Ingrid gaped at her. She didn’t know how to respond to it, could not understand the weight of the emotions that rose in her chest at these words.

The girl pressed on, stepping ever closer to her. “Would you believe me? Do you believe in love?”

“I am a soldier,” Ingrid murmured again. The girl was so close to her now, she could feel her breath on her face. “I don’t believe in anything.”

“Shame,” the girl breathed, and then she wrapped her arm around Ingrid’s waist and kissed her.

It felt as though everything that had been dead inside Ingrid had come alive again, all the molecules that made up her body crackling with fire and energy that had been so long forgotten. She reached up to wrap her hands in the girl’s long red hair, pulling her closer, drinking her in, feeling her body move in response to hers much like it had on the dance floor, and suddenly Ingrid was filled with a longing like she had never known, pulling at every seam in her body until she utterly ached with it--

There were shouts from the doors behind them, and a few screams. The girl pulled away immediately and swore softly. “We must go,” she said, “quickly!” and she grabbed Ingrid’s hand and pulled her along, back the way they came through the crowded streets.

“What-” Ingrid gasped, “what’s happening?” Her brain still strove to work, to  _ move _ after the utter bliss it had just experienced.

“Police,” the girl gasped out, and Ingrid felt fear sink in her stomach, freezing her. “We have to keep moving,” the girl insisted, and she tugged her along again. Finally, she pulled Ingrid into a darkened alley and said, “We should be safe here for the moment.”

Ingrid leaned against the wall, trying to catch her breath. She could still hear the cries from the inside of the bar as the patrons inside had their safe haven disrupted. What would have happened if they had not taken that brief moment outside, had not stopped for air? She could have been arrested, found out, assaulted, killed, or even worse, unspeakable actions. She looked at the girl again, tried to conjure up the memory of that moment they had shared, those feelings--but there was nothing. She had grown numb to the world again.

She heard the wind, felt the gust of cold as it bit at her hands and snared her hair. And she knew, deep inside, that her ghosts were coming again and this time they would be louder than they had ever been before and this time, they would not leave until someone found her dangling by her bedsheets, or bloodied in the bathtub. Ingrid knew this, and, as the voices began again, whispering and howling questions she could not answer, she knew what had to be done.

The girl was watching her closely. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

Ingrid shook her head. Then, she reached into her belt and pulled out her pistol. As she did so, she felt her hand brush against that pot of honey she had found, completely forgotten until now. “I am a soldier,” she murmured, “and my ghosts are many, and they will never, ever go away. If you truly love me, as you say, you will end it for me. You will take my pistol, and you will shoot me in this alley.”

The girl stared at her. Then, she shook her head fervently and began to back away. “Please.” Ingrid took a step closer to the girl, and felt her voice crack. “I won’t speak,” she whispered. “I won’t say a word. I won’t come back to haunt you.” She laughed bitterly. “I won’t have the time.”

The girl stood there, frozen. She glanced at the gun, at Ingrid, at the darkened alleyway behind her. In a moment, something in her eyes changed, and she reached over to take the gun from Ingrid. 

“Oh, thank you,” Ingrid cried, “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The girl examined the pistol in her hands, checked the sight, and then reached up and aimed. Ingrid stood up, arms out, ready to embrace her death. The ghosts howled around her, louder, they did not like this, they did not like her choosing her own fate. 

_ She was ready. Except-- _

“Wait,” Ingrid said suddenly, for reasons even she couldn’t understand, choosing formality in her final moment. “We never introduced ourselves. What’s your--”

The gun fired, and Ingrid knew nothing more.

 

The gun was heavy in her hands, and her ears still rang from the sound of the shot. The girl had fallen almost immediately, another crumpled body lying in the filthy streets. For a moment, she hesitated, looking down at the results of what she had just done. Then, Eva reached over and plucked the pot of honey from the soldier girl’s pockets. 

Prize in hand, she wandered down the street for a few more steps, and then vanished into the darkening shadows. 


	5. interlude: grieg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Edward Grieg! This chapter is based on his two pieces, Liten Fugl and Elfin Dance. I would definitely recommend checking them out while you read this!
> 
> This part of the story is based on the fairytale "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen.

Kaia and Gerda sat on the edge of the gutter, swinging their legs together and telling each other stories, as they were often wont to do. 

It was the height of Norwegian summer, and the air was warm, fragrant, and light. In front of them, the sun was setting, all fiery reds and oranges. Above them the garden was in full bloom, sweet, dripping vines of honeysuckle entwined with the tall, hairy stalks of sneezewort and gentle stems of foxglove, and, outshining them all, the tall rose bushes just overflowing with beautiful red flowers. Around them, the evening birds were just beginning their mournful calls. Everything about the evening was still and perfect.

Gerda shifted in her seat and whispered, “Do you hear that? The piano?”

Kaia tilted her head and listened for a moment. “Yes,” she murmured. “It’s beautiful. Who plays?”

“The man in the apartment above mine,” Gerda said. “He plays all the time, practicing hour after hour. Sometimes I will leave for school in the mornings while he practices, only to come back in the afternoon to hear him still working on the same piece.”

“Why does he practice so?” Kaia whispered, eyes wide.

“Do you know the empty apartment upstairs, the one with the fine white curtains in the window?” Gerda asked. Kaia nodded. “It is right next door to his apartment. And he believes that the apartment is not truly empty, but haunted by the ghost of Edvard Grieg, right here in our own fair city. And so, he serenades him every night with his own pieces, a bit of beautiful music. And--” Gerda’s idea began to take greater shape as she gazed into the wide, enraptured eyes of her friend. “That’s the last piano in the world, right up there in that room, and the keys cut his fingers with every note he plays because our great God has decided that humans don’t deserve music anymore, that we do not treat it with the holiness it deserves. And every note he plays hurts him so, pain unimaginable, like toothpicks pressed under his fingernails, but listen…”

The two girls sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the sounds of the notes as they tripped and twinkled and shone and called out like small birds. The music was breathtakingly, achingly beautiful.

“He plays Edvard Grieg’s music every day, just hoping that his ghost will awaken and come to him, give him a kiss, an embrace, a smile, a meaning for all his pain.”

“Wow,” Kaia whispered. “This man--do you know his name?”

Gerda thought for a moment, then remembered something her grandmother had said about him ages ago. “Jonas, I think,” she murmured. “That is his name.”

The music around them changed. It grew faster, upbeat, tripping and skipping around like a dance.

“Will you dance with me?” Gerda asked Kaia suddenly, blushing. 

Kaia grinned at her, turning a bit red too. “Okay,” she giggled.

They stood up, and took each other’s hands. And, listening to the lively beat of the music, they twirled each other through the garden, through dangling vines and patches of brightly colored flowers, and past the wicked thorny stems of the rose bushes. Round and round they went, grinning and laughing until their cheeks ached and their sides were splitting, till they were so dizzy they could no longer stand up, and they lay together on the ground in the shade of the bushes. Gerda turned to smile at Kaia again, and Kaia smiled back. They were so close together, hands entwined, and suddenly Gerda began to wonder what it would be like to kiss Kaia, the way that her father kissed her mother…

_ “Ow!”  _ Kaia cried out suddenly, bolting upright. “My eye!” 

“Kaia? Are you okay?” Gerda pushed herself up. 

_ “Ow!”  _ Kaia cried again, “my  _ heart!” _ She clutched her eye with one hand, and the other clutched at her breast.

_ “Kaia!”  _ Gerda cried frantically,  _ “Kaia,  _ tell me if you are alright!”

But Kaia did not respond. She just sat there in the garden, holding her eye and her chest, eyes dark and full of anger towards the world around her.


	6. chapter 4: the piece of stardust

It was freezing.

Eva’s breath billowed around her as she moved through the forest, snow crunching underfoot. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her shoulders, wishing that she had brought a heavier coat. 

Around her, the evergreens towered tall and dark. Icicles and clumps of snow hung from their branches, glowing coldly in the moonlight. Above her, Eva could see stars, shining distantly through the treetops. The air was still, and apart from the sound of her footsteps and her breathing, it was completely silent. It was a peculiar feeling, wandering around this quiet, dark wood, completely alone. Eva felt her stomach become cold with uneasiness as she walked, and that feeling grew heavier with every step.

There was a light up ahead--Eva could see it, flickering and dancing faintly through the trees. Something different than this cold, black, snowy monotony. She quickened her pace. 

The trees parted as she grew closer, gaps between the branches growing wider. She could see the source of the mysterious, dancing light more clearly now: it was a small campfire, orange flame and crumbling logs glowing red-hot against the whiteness of the ground surrounding it. The sight of it instantly made her feel warmer. She was not alone. She had found what she was looking for. 

“Who’s there?” 

A voice called out as she approached the clearing, sharply edged with apprehension. The speaker sat on the opposite side of the fire from Eva, and the light of the flames shielded all but their shadow from view.

Eva raised her hands in the air, and stepped into the firelight. “I mean you no harm,” she said warily. “I’m just a lonely traveller, and I’m cold. I would just like to sit by your fire for a moment.”

There was silence. Eva heard movement beside the fire, and then a sigh. “Fine. You may join me.”

“Thank you.” Eva smiled in gratitude, and settled herself down.

“Of course.” The girl poked at the fire with a stick. “If you are travelling through the Snow King’s woods at this time of night, you must be in need of some help.”

Now closer to the flames, Eva could make out the face of the person who had spoken. They were a girl, about Eva’s age, with long, soft brown hair and dark, hard eyes that watched her warily as she sat down. “The Snow King?” Eva asked, curious.

The girl stared at her. “Surely,” she said slowly, “your mother warned you about dangers of the Snow King.”

Eva felt the air grow colder around her, and she moved closer to the fire. She shook her head. “No, doesn’t ring any bells.”

The girl glanced around nervously, then leaned in close. “The Snow King,” she whispered, “is the ruler of the winter. All the snowflakes are his minions, and they flock to him like bees. He is a firm but fair king, most of the time. But once, every hundred years or so, he will come into the human world, and enchant a child with promises of games, candy, freedom. Then, he spirits the child away, and imprisons them forever in his frozen kingdom. This forest, these trees--they are all part of his domain, and he reigns supreme over them. The only thing that keeps him from taking me away as well is this fire, this warmth. It is my only protection against the cold.”

Eva shivered. The fire sputtered as a sudden breeze passed through the trees. “And was that you?” she whispered. “Did he--take you?”

The girl shook her head. “No,” she murmured. “Not me, but my... friend. Kaia. He took her, and now I walk these woods trying to get her back, but I have not yet--not yet found her.”

Eva nodded quietly. “You must have been close,” she whispered, “to look for her for so long, after all this time.”

The girl nodded. “We were,” she said, voice catching. “We were--we were best friends, her and I. For as long as I can remember. Our apartments were right next to each other, and the rooftops below our bedroom windows stretched out so close to each other that they were almost touching.” The girl smiled at the memory. “We used to climb out onto them and talk. And we talked about everything, about our neighbors, and the kids at school, and the films we had seen and the books we had read, a funny or interesting thought one of us had just had. And there was a garden on the rooftop...full of flowers and fruit bushes in the summer. We would lay up there for hours, smelling the flowers, braiding them into chains and crowns.” Her face fell a little. “Our favorite were always...the roses. They were so bright, so vibrant, red against green. We’d pick them and wear them behind our ears, press them in notebooks, keep them in vases until they wilted and died, and keep their scattered petals in memory of them. We were...we were best friends,” she said again, and her voice was harder, colder, like the night air. 

“But what happened?” Eva whispered.

“One day...something changed.” The girl shook her head. “We were lying in the garden, just as we always had before, when something caught in Kaia’s eye. And then suddenly, she grew...cold. Distant. Angry. She ripped apart the flowers and rose bushes in our garden, and pulled the shutters so I could no longer see into her window. She was rude to my mother and cursed her parents, and as winter came, all she would do was stay inside, and watch the snowflakes fall down. And then one day...she was just gone. Like that. Vanished.” She wiped away a tear. “My parents said that she drowned in the river, but I could not believe them. I  _ would  _ not. But I went to the river anyway, and asked for her to be returned to me. And the river said no, they could not. Because it did not have her. She had been taken by someone else. Someone cold, strong, and wickedly beautiful. And I realized that the Snow King must have spirited her away. So I followed her, over hills and valleys, past sorceresses and wicked crows, until I arrived here. And I know she is here, somewhere in these woods. I have not found her yet, but I will find her. I  _ will. _ ” Her voice was hard and resolute, despite the glittering tears that streaked down her face. Eva believed her.

“I believe you,” Eva said. She shifted around the fire until she was close enough to reach out and comfort the girl.“I wish you...I wish you well on your quest.”

“Thank you.” The girl sniffled, and quickly swiped a hand across her face, scattering her tears. Eva watched as they fell amongst the snow. 

She felt something cold and wet hit her hand, and looked around to see what had happened. One of the girl’s tears had landed on her skin and there it sat, glowing faintly in the moonlight. Eva looked around carefully. The girl was gazing into the fire, lost in her own thoughts. She wiped away a few more tears. 

Eva reached into her pocket, and pulled out a small vial. And, making sure the girl wasn’t looking, she slipped the tear into it as neatly as she could. She turned it around a few times, holding it up to the moonlight. It made the tear gleam like a fallen star. Eva smiled in satisfaction. Then, she got up, murmuring a quick goodbye that was not returned. 

The girl sat still behind her, watching the fire flicker and burn. And above them, it had begun to snow.


	7. chapter 5: the secret baptism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This section of the story is based on the novel "Pan" by Knut Hamsun.

**_He loved you once. Remember that. He loved you once, but now he’s left you, he’s gone, he’s off cavorting with her, with HER--_ **

Eva felt ill. She lay back down. 

It was not important, really. She had loved him once, too, but he was just a lowly woodsman, an odd hunter who refused to engage in proper society. She had someone much better now, a man of status and money, a man who would take care of her and love her the way she needed to be loved. Let that dirty old woodsman and the blacksmith’s daughter roll around together. It made no difference to her.

**_Except that it does._ **

Except that it did. 

 

He had loved her once, her man of the woods, that warm, lively summer. He had invited her into his cottage, shown her his catches, the spoils of his hunts. He had explored the woods with her, shown her the beauty of the world around them. The mountains, old stones jutting into the wide, endless skies. The heavy, deep forests, trees thick with leaves and fertile with life, bark warm and lush with mosses and lichen. The wide, grassy clearings, covered with soft carpets of flowers, where they would kiss and tumble about and love each other in the dappled sunshine. He would braid together garlands of flowers for her, placing them delicately on her braided head. Then, guiding her hands, he showed her how to make one, laughingly ducking his head to avoid her as she tried to place it on his head, until she successfully wrestled him to the ground. And then they sat together, arms around arms around arms, flower crowns askew, king and queen of the forests and the mountains and the clearings. He had loved her.

He had a funny way of showing it at times, that fantastical hunter of hers. How his eyes would dance when they met her eyes, how sweet his kisses would be upon her lips, cheeks, and neck, how kind and gentle his words were upon her ears. But there were times when she would see him, in town or at gatherings. And his eyes would flash, and his face would darken against her bright and smiling face. And he would grow cold, and turn away from her, talk to some other lovely young girl while the corners of his eyes still stayed pointed in her direction. At times, he would frighten her, this lover of hers. He seemed so angry, so calculated. So determined to hurt her for reasons she could not understand. He would always apologize after, always kiss her and hold her as fiercely as before. But she could not forget those moments.

And then that Baron from across the sea arrived and her father had given her that meaningful glance, and she knew that she had to leave him. She knew he had suffered for this, that his heart had filled with anguish and rage and fear when he saw the Baron’s arms around her. It sent a thrill through her, the realization of that power.

Sometimes, she thought she had a bit of her own darkness inside her as well. 

She had not been able to leave him fully, however. The small swell of her stomach grew larger by the day, reminding her of the bond between them. Inextricable. Unbreakable.

And now that blacksmith’s daughter truly thought she could get in the way of it…

He  _ would  _ take her back.

 

The path to his house was different in the fall. 

Leaves crunched under Eva’s feet as she made her through the trees. With every step she took, she felt her body recoil, felt her desire to  _ go back  _ heighten, strike at her like a snake. But still, she moved onward, swallowing her fear.

Eva felt a lurch of nerves. Suddenly, the ground tilted underneath her and she stumbled, legs crumpling beneath her, twisting into the dirt. She felt a shriek escape her lips as she fell flat against the ground, the wind knocked out of her. And for a moment, she just lay there, feeling the breeze against her cheeks and the scrum of leaves and soil against the back of her head. She closed her eyes.

**_Get up._ **

_ No. I’m tired. _

**_I said, GET UP._ **

_ Leave me alone. _

Footsteps thudded towards her. Eva heard a gasp, and then her name.  _ “Eva?  _ What are you doing here?”

“I fell,” she said, stupidly.

“That, I could see,” he replied, curtly.

Evaa opened opened her eyes to see  _ him,  _ her woodsman, standing above her, one arm outstretched. She mustered up as much strength as she could, and reached up to take it.

“Glahn,” she said, as he hoisted her up.

“Yes,” he answered. 

His tone was cold. She did not let it trouble her. “Please take me to your cabin,” she said.

He scoffed. “No,” he said. 

“No?” Eva still felt dizzy. She reached out behind her, feeling the smooth, cool back of a tree and clinging to it for support. 

“No,” he repeated. “You left me. It is over. I will help you out of these woods, and I will bring you to your home, but that is it. Do not abandon me and then try to come back into my life, Eva. I am done with you.”

Eva felt as though the world had tipped upside down again. “You are?” she whispered, unable to think of a better response.

From within her she heard her voice, welling up from her darkest depths.  **_Tell him now. NOW!_ **

“You are?” she asked him again. “You do not even wish to hear what I have to tell you?”

Glahn shook his head. She could see the disinterest outlined in his face. The sight of it stirred the faintest hints of worry in her heart. “There is nothing that you could say to me that would change this.”

“Really,” she said softly, coldly. “Not even the fact that I am carrying your child, your own flesh and blood and seed?”

Glahn reacted as though she had struck him. A flurry of emotions crossed his face: anger, fear, resentment, a touch of what she hoped could be caring, worry--and then he hardened again.

“I am sorry,” he said, and she could hear the finality in his voice. “Not even that. Good luck, Eva. I wish you and your Baron well.”

With that, he turned away, and headed back to his house in the woods.

 

Eva stared at the sea, the roiling crashing of the waves stretching out into the hazy grey horizon. 

The  _ thing  _ in her stomach was growing larger, squirming and kicking inside of her. The day was soon coming when she would no longer be able to hide it in the folds of skirts. And then, she would be discovered, shamed, cast out. 

Glahn had left her, had not even looked her in the eye as she told him of her condition. He had willingly given himself to her when he had not had to consider the consequences. And now when she had come to him for help for a problem that he had created, he had not even looked her in the eye. He had turned his back on her, had kicked her into the dirt. He had his blacksmith girl now, and she and her plight were all but forgotten, left to suffer on her own.

Although the expanse in front of her was vast, endless, Eva felt as though the walls of the earth and sky were closing in on her.

_ Unless...No. _

Eva shook her head. She could not...she  _ would  _ not…

But she was alone. She had no one to help her, no one to turn to. She was carrying this burden by herself. If she was discovered, her life would be ruined. She had no other options.

And so she turned into herself. And whispered,  _ Please...help me. _

Deep within, her sister stirred and smiled.  **_I thought you’d never ask._ **

 

“Are you alright?” Eva’s father asked her when she returned home that night.

“Why do you ask?” she responded carefully, avoiding his eyes.

“You were out for a long time,” he answered. “You weren’t seeing that woodsman again now, were you?”

Eva laughed in surprise. “No! No, Father, I was not. He--I--there is nothing there.”

The voice crackled in her head.  **_Tell her about that slut, the blacksmith’s daughter._ **

“He--he--” She heard her voice falter. “He has a new woman now.”

“Hmmm.” Her father grunted and sat back in his chair. “And who is she?”

Eva hesitated. 

**_Tell him!_ **

“It’s--Ingrid,” she murmured. “The blacksmith’s daughter.”

“Really?” her father mused.  _ “That  _ is the woman he replaced you with?”

Eva felt uncomfortable. She wanted to leave the room. “I suppose you could say that,” she whispered.

“I see.” He stood up. “Good night, my daughter.”

 

**_WAKE UP!_ **

The voice jolted through Eva’s mind, shaking her abruptly from sleep. 

_ What? What do you want from me?  _

**_The time is now. Get dressed, hurry. Go to the marketplace._ **

_ I’m tired… _

**_You will be more tired if you are left starving and homeless with a child to take care of. Go, NOW!_ **

_ Fine… _

Eva threw back her bedsheets and dressed herself. She did not know why it was so necessary for her to be in the marketplace immediately, but she had no choice to trust her sister’s voice in her head. And so she went.

The market was busy as usual. Merchants, mainly fishermen, displayed their goods, freshly caught perch and herring hanging from their carts. Eva picked her way carefully through the cobbled streets, keeping out for... _ something.  _

It did not take her long. She spotted  _ him,  _ wandering his way through the crowd, rifle slung  over one shoulder and a few pelts over the other. She hurried immediately towards him, stumbling a little as she tried to wind her way through the packs of people. She saw him turn, and as she locked eyes with him briefly, she quickened her pace, sure that he would turn away from her and run. But to her surprise, he started directly towards her. As he drew closer, she realized that he did not look well. His eyes were wild and shadowed with grey, as though he had not slept, and his hair was tangled and unkempt. The sight of him frightened her a little. She couldn’t help taking a few steps back.

“Glahn,” she said, nodding at him.

“Eva,” he said, curtly. “What a shock, seeing you here after all that has happened.”

She didn’t understand what he meant. “Sorry?” she asked. “What has happened? I do not ask to condescend you, I truly am ignorant of any significant events.”

Glahn laughed, a cold, bitter sound. “Of course,” he said, “of course you would be. You, living your sheltered life in your sheltered mansion, free to ignore the devious workings of those around you--”

_ “Enough,  _ Glahn!” Eva’s heart burned with rage. “Do not say such things! Do not make such assumptions about me--my life! Just--just tell me what has happened.”

He smiled at her, a thin, twisted, joyless grin. “Your dear father,” he murmured, “has destroyed my house.”

Shock blew through Eva.  _ “What?”  _ she breathed. 

“Yes,” he spat at her, “Yes, I returned to my cabin yesterday evening to find it ablaze, crumbling into ashes. And your father, watching me from across the clearing, shrouded in the smoke.”

“I--I--” Eva shook her head. She could not believe it. She would not believe it. But then she remembered the look in her father’s eyes after she had told him about the blacksmith’s daughter, and she knew he was telling the truth. “I am so sorry, Glahn. Please believe me, I had no idea that he planned to do such a thing. I beg you, please--” She reached out for his hand, and, to her surprise, caught it. “Come stay with us until find another place to stay. We will treat you well. I will make sure you are welcome. And my father will pay for what he has done.”

Glahn looked at her and smiled, and shook his head. “Eva, you need to understand that the reason you and I--the reason that we can never be together is because you will never be able to understand me or my life. We truly are from different worlds, and you cannot see it. Your father destroyed my house. I can no more easily live in your home than live under the sea.”

“But--but--” Eva spluttered. He had to stay with her, he  _ had  _ to, it  _ must  _ be her only chance...

“Do not worry about me,” he said. “I have found a place to stay. I will not be left in the cold. I appreciate your offer, but our time is over. It can never be again.”

He let go of her hand, and turned to leave. Eva watched him go, helplessly. She had nothing left to say that would convince him to stay. He had left her, to go where, she did not even know.

**_Go after him!_ **

_ No! How could I? What is left to say? _

**_Trust me! I will tell you. But you MUST hurry._ **

Eva had nothing left to lose. She did as the voice in her head commanded, and ran after the woodsman. “Glahn!” she cried out, “Glahn!”

He turned around to face her. “What?” he demanded.

Eva stopped, out of breath.  _ Now what?  _ She asked herself.  _ What do I do?  _

And she spoke the words that immediately came into her mind. 

“Surely you want revenge for what has been done to you?”

Eva awoke to pounding downstairs. She heard the door slam, and footsteps thumping their way up the stairs. A fist rapped urgently at her door. “Eva? Eva, are you awake?”

Evaa felt a rush of anxiety. She quickly pushed aside her covers and pulled on her dressing gown. “Yes,” she called out, “yes, what is it?”

The door creaked open, and her father entered the room. His face was ashen and twisted with worry. “Father!” Eva hurried towards him and clasped his hands. “What has happened?”

“Please,” he said, pulling away, “sit down, my daughter. There has been an accident.”

Those words sent a surge of fear through Eva, so powerful that her vision blurred. She backed up slowly, settling herself on the edge of her bed. “Father, please tell me. Has anyone been hurt?”

Her father nodded slowly. Cold dread began to creep its way down Eva’s throat. “Is--has Glahn been hurt?” she whispered.

Her father’s face shifted from worry to anger. “Glahn? No, no, no. You  _ must  _ forget about that man. A man much closer to you has had his life threatened. This morning, a boulder rolled off the edge of the cliff above the harbor, and fell down to the Baron’s ship as it was docked below.”

Eva gasped. “The Baron--is he--”

Her father shook his head quickly. “No, he is fine. He was at the market at the time, safe from harm. But our servant, that blacksmith’s daughter, Ingrid--she was repairing the rudder of the ship when it fell, and she was crushed by the falling rock. She is dead.”

Eva’s stomach lurched. “Dead?” she whispered.

Her father nodded solemnly. “I believe that her death was accidental. But I believe that it is possible that the boulder did not fall naturally. In that case, I fear that the Baron was the intended target, and whoever did this deed may wish to harm you as well.”

Eva nodded silently. Her throat was so tight that she could not speak. 

“I am sorry,” her father whispered. He reached over and wrapped his arm around her in an uncomfortable hug. She leaned into his shoulder, and shuddered.

When he got up to leave, Eva sat up straight.  _ YOU did this. YOU told Glahn to roll that boulder. _

**_And what about it?_ **

_ She is DEAD! _

**_You wanted her out of the way. I did that for you._ **

_ Not like this. _

**_Then be more specific next time._ **

_ Fuck you. _

**_Language, Eva._ **

_ FUCK YOU! An innocent girl is DEAD! _

**_Do not act as if you did not dream of this._ **

Eva pressed her hands over her eyes. She wanted this voice, these thoughts to  _ stop.  _

Because she knew it was right.

**_You know I am right._ **

_ Leave me ALONE! _

Eva heard laughter, clear as though it was directly in her ear.  **_Don’t you see, Eva? I am your sister. I am PART of you. There is NO escaping me._ **

_ No… _

**_You were NOTHING without me. You couldn’t even keep a man._ **

_ SHUT UP! _

**_You are weak. You should just stop resisting. Let go._ **

_ No. _

**_Let go._ **

_ NO! _

**_LET GO!_ **

The voice sliced through her head, so loud she could not see, could not hear her own thoughts, her own words.

_ No… _

**_Let. Go._ **

Eva sat still in that moment, so rigidly still that it seemed as though she was no longer even breathing. And then she opened her eyes. And she smiled. 

 

Eva and the Baron were married the next week. The death of Ingrid had put his life in perspective, he told her. Now, he saw that things could not wait any longer. Truly, his day of revelation was at hand. They must love now, or risk never being able to love at all. Eva welcomed the decision with a beaming smile. Nothing would make her happier, she told him.

A change had gone over her since the incident, the Baron noted. She was quieter, more introspective, more willing to listen to those around her. And she always had this odd, strangely satisfied smile on her face. The Baron was not sure what had made her act this way, but he welcomed this new behavior. And he was even more thrilled with her when, only a few weeks after their wedding night, she blushingly announced to him that she was with child. The Baron shared her smile after that. His name and blood would be carried on, just as he’d always dreamed.

Her birth came smoothly a few months later. (Was it only a few months? The Baron had never been the best at math…) A beautiful baby girl, for the two of them to love and cherish and pamper. He was over the moon. Eva seemed pleased too, although he could never tell what she was thinking these days. But she still had that strange smile, and she would laugh and hum quietly to herself. And her giving birth did not seem to have diminished her beauty, as the Baron had feared it would. Really, he was quite pleased with how his life had turned out. Him and his beautiful wife, and his beautiful daughter…

That is, until he and Eva woke up one night to find her gone from her crib, without a trace.


	8. chapter 6: the photo of a ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for death related to a transportation vehicle in this chapter.

The last thing that Ingrid wanted to do today was go to work. 

That morning, when she woke up and saw the heavy grey sky settling itself firmly above the Oslo skyline, she’d immediately flopped back onto her bed and buried her face in her pillow. It was too dark, too cold out. Another day was just too much.

But somehow she’d pulled herself out of bed and gotten dressed, and gulped down a yogurt for breakfast (one of those shitty, low-sugar ones that tasted like paste, but she was trying to be more healthy). And then she was out her door, and on her way to catch the tram.

 

Eva woke up to the light streaming in through her window. Not sunlight, necessarily, it was too cloudy for that. But it was a bright day, regardless, and she couldn’t fall back asleep. 

She got up and got dressed, and took a moment to peek out her her window at the buildings above and below her. She loved the view from her window, loved the sight of the squat, square skyscrapers under the deep grey sky, the fjord spread out in the distance, pale blue water meeting city streets, the white triangle of the opera house stark against the sky, and the green-brown cliffs in the distance. Gazing down at her city, Eva felt the yearning, the  _ need  _ to go out and capture its unique character and beauty.

Camera bag bumping against her hip, she hurried out the door.

 

Ingrid shifted her feet as she stood on the tram platform. The tram was late, of course. It always was when it would most inconvenience her. She turned her coat collar up against the cold air, and squinted at the screen of her phone, selecting a game to play to pass the time. 

She wasn’t the only person waiting. Ingrid was dimly aware of a few other people around her, most of them checking their watches and shivering in the cold as well. The person that Ingrid was the most sharply aware of was a man standing a few feet behind her, slumped up against the wall. His bedraggled, blond face was a familiar sight at the tracks, as he was often there, begging morning commuters for money. Occasionally, he played the cello, and the music was so beautiful that it brought tears to Ingrid’s eyes when she heard it, and she had to resist the urge to empty her entire wallet into the open case at his feet. Today, however, he was in a strange mood. She could hear him audibly grumbling to himself, arguing with and gesticulating wildly in the air. Occasionally, he would shout at the rest of the people on the platform, something about the apocalypse or a kind of day of revelation coming, or some similar idea. Some nonsense like that. Ingrid shrugged and looked away.

She turned back to the game on her phone. It was a silly little multilevel fantasy fighting sort of thing that she’d downloaded to get more gems on Stardew Valley, but had ended up getting strangely hooked on it. Right now her fighter, a too-scantily clad female viking, was facing up against her newest opponent: a massive, pixelated, fire-breathing bear. Humming quietly to herself, she went to her inventory and selected her silver broadsword. Charging up the power bar, her character took the swing. It was a direct hit. The bear let out a silent roar, and a burst of digital flame exploded from its mouth as it staggered and collapsed. Cartoonish x’es appeared over its eyes, and a banner declaring her  **_WINNER!!_ ** appeared on the screen. Behind her, the man on the platform let out another mighty shout, startling her. 

As she looked up, she could hear a rumbling in the distance. The tram was coming. She could see its lights in the distance. 

And then...

Ingrid felt only the mental shock at first, bursting through her like electricity, numbing her brain and everything else with it. And suddenly she was brutally and frighteningly aware of her body, a puppet moving according to the whims of some unseen force, careening and staggering its way across the platform, arms pinwheeling, until suddenly there was  _ no  _ platform, just air and steel rails and dirt--

And Ingrid felt herself fall onto the tracks, right in the path of the oncoming tram.

 

Eva heard screaming and looked up from her camera. The crowd around her had rushed forward, all standing on the very edge of the platform’s marked yellow safety line, looking down in shock and horror. Some were pointing, others had their phones out, filming or calling the police, and still others were shouting, at each other, at the scene before, them, or what seemed like nothing in particular. A woman near her pointed straight ahead and yelled, “There! That’s the man that pushed her!”

Eva followed the woman’s gesture to see the homeless man that practically lived on the benches of the platform. His arms were crossed and he looked about as disoriented as Eva felt, backing away slowly and muttering to himself. Someone else in the crowd let out a loud shriek, and Eva turned back to see a girl about her age, sprawled on the tracks. To her left, she could see the tram coming, rattling its way up the tracks directly towards her. If the girl didn’t find a way back onto the platform, she would surely die.

Eva felt frozen, seeing the situation play out. The tram drew closer, and still the girl just lay there. Some people leaned over the edge of the platform, holding out hands, scarves, bags, something for her to grab onto. She reached up for them, arms waving wildly, but her legs collapsed underneath her and she fell forward again. And there she lay, staring wide-eyed at the crowd, shaking as the track shook underneath her. Eva watched in horror.

And suddenly, the girl seemed to turn her head and look directly at Eva, staring at her as though she could see directly into her soul. And as Eva gazed back, into the face of a girl that she knew was about to die, a living ghost, she felt something shift inside her. She felt hollow and full at the same time, as though she was both inside her body and watching herself from the outside. Her limbs felt completely frozen, her mouth stuck in a silent scream.

And yet, somehow, her arms lifted, and held her camera to her face.

 

_ Ingrid fell onto the track, and everything went quiet. _

_ She felt time slow down. The world around her blurred into shades of grey and white.  _

_ She saw the people clustering at the edge of the platform, holding things out for her to grab onto. She saw the cloudy sky and the buildings above her, swimming slowly in circles. She saw the face of the homeless man from the tracks, the man who had pushed her over the side. And then she turned her head and saw the tram heading directly towards her. Its lights seemed dazzling, blinding. And yet, somehow, it could not see her. _

_ Ingrid tried to climb out for a moment, just a moment, but then she stopped. She was going to die on this day, and she knew it. Resistance was futile. And so she lay, and waited, and gazed at the people above her. _

_ And then suddenly--she saw her. Eva, after all these years. Standing there with her camera. _

_ Ingrid lifted her head and smiled her prettiest smile for the camera.  _

You know,  _ she thought to herself,  _ the moment before you die is such a gift.  _ You  _ get to decide what goes through your head, what your last song will be.

_ She closed her eyes and thought of someone she loved very much, sitting on a stoop, playing guitar.  _

_ And then-- _

_ She let the tram rip through her. _

 

As the tram passed, Eva felt herself thrown back into her body with such violence that she felt she might throw up. And then she looked down at her hands, and knew that she  _ would  _ throw up.

_ A photo, a picture-- _ how had she taken that? In the last few moments of a girl’s young life, how had she not tried to help her at all, how had she instead sat back and  _ taken a picture of her _ seconds before death? As though it was a spectacle, a stunt? As though it was anything other than the brutal ending of a life cut far too short?

It was all so wrong, so horribly wrong. 

Eva closed her eyes, and she could see that girl again, lying against the tracks, a sacrifice ready to be taken from the world. She felt a scream building up inside of her, and it took all of her effort to force it back down. 

_ That photo, that photo…that death, that ghost... _

It was though everything that she had believed in her life had suddenly fallen to pieces, but also as if they had been breaking this entire time and she had only realized it now. 

Eva felt nausea overtake her, turning her vision black. She staggered backwards, unable to remain on her feet.

As she did, Eva felt the camera slip from her fingers. 

She watched as it shattered into pieces on the ground.


	9. chapter 7: bad men

_ Eva opened her eyes. _

_ The world around her was dark, illuminated only by a small fire. The orange light of the flames burned into her eyes as they adjusted to the gloom. _

_ “Are you alright?” A voice asked her. _

_ Eva turned her head with some effort to see who had spoken. Every muscle in her body ached, as though she had not moved for quite some time. The speaker was a man with tangled blond hair and a lean, gaunt face. His eyes were shadowed, and they looked at her eagerly, expectantly. _

_ Eva’s mind felt foggy. Everything that she knew or thought that she should know seemed just out of reach, past some veil that she couldn’t quite see through. But as she blinked and her eyes adjusted, her memories began to flow back. She found she recognized the man looking at her, but his name escaped her. _

_ “Take your time,” he said. “It is disorienting, coming back to your body. Don’t expect to remember everything at once.” _

_ Isak. His name was Isak.  _

_ Eva stood up. Her memories were flooding back now--her sister’s betrayal, her petition to this mysterious man for help, and the quest that he had sent her on,  outside of her body and outside of her lifetime. “I have the things you asked for,” she said, reaching around her for the objects she had brought back. “One pot of honey.” The jar she’d taken from the soldier’s body, growing cold and stiff in the lamplight. “One piece of stardust.” The tear from the girl she’d met in that mysterious woods, looking for her lost friend. “One secret baptism.” The child stirred faintly in her arms as she handed it over to Isak. Eva hoped she wouldn’t wake. “And the photo of a ghost.” She held out the roll of film towards him, turning her head away. It prickled her uncomfortably to look at it.  _

_ An expression crossed Isak’s face, a feeling Eva couldn’t quite make out. “Hello, little girl,” he murmured to the child in his arms. Then he looked back up at Eva. “You have done remarkably well.” _

_ Eva’s stomach twisted with excitement and apprehension. “Then will you do as I ask?” she asked him, “have the Astronomer mauled, turn my sister into a crow?” _

_ Isak looked at her for a moment. Then he laughed. It was a cold, high sound, and it chilled Eva to her very bones. A feeling of utter horror seized her as he shook his head and said to her, “Oh, no, Eva. I am no murderer. I just like honey.” _

_ “What?” Eva gasped. She couldn’t believe him. After all of this, all these lifetimes, all these sacrifices and death-- _

_ Isak picked up the jar that Eva had presented to him, and lifted it to his lips. He drank of the sweet golden liquid for a moment, and then closed his eyes, smiling contentedly. “You’ll just have to do it yourself.” He shrugged. “Now go away, girl.” _

_ Eva felt that white-hot rage boiling up inside of her again. He had used her, he would give her NOTHING, it had all been for NOTHING-- _

_ “I  _ **_hate_ ** _ you,” she spat at him. She stalked out of his hut. _


	10. chapter 8: hero

Eva remembered. 

She remembered the lifetimes that she had lived on her ill-fated quest for revenge. She remembered the people she had been, and those she had met. She remembered those she had loved, and those she had lost, and those she had hurt. Those she had killed. All those lives, tangled up in those dirty webs of fate. Doomed forever to have crossed, and thus been destroyed. She remembered. 

And she remembered further. She remembered who she had always been, throughout all her lives. Eva, the superhero, the immortal, jumping into different timestreams and living again and again. That was how she had always thought herself as. What a stupid, foolish girl. She was never any hero, or genius; she was not special. She was the same as everyone who had lived and died before her, and the only thing that kept her apart from them all this time was her empty, shallow hubris. Now she had nothing. 

She remembered further. She remembered her friends, the people like her who also travelled through time, jumping in and out of bodies like they were last year’s fashions, always on the lookout for the next adventurer. Together, they had been invincible, living and dying freely without consequences, meeting up every century or so in that bar at the end of the world, drinking whiskey all night long and finding an anchor in each other, a contrast to their otherwise fleeting lives. _ Eva, Ingrid, Jonas, Isak. _

They had all been there, throughout her journey. Eva had encountered many different versions of them alongside all the different versions of herself. But she had not seen it, had not been able to recognize her lifelong friends in the people around her...and she had hurt them. She had fought them, she had killed them, she had sat back and let harm come to them. Over and over and over again, she had done this. It was more than murder. It was destruction. It was obliteration.

How could she face them now? 


	11. chapter 9: midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Grieg piece in this chapter is In the Hall of the Mountain King, of course!

The bell jingled faintly behind Eva as she pushed open the door to the pub. Inside, the sound of music swirled around her, along with the faint cheers and clapping of her friends. As she looked around for the source, she saw Isak sitting at the piano, playing a quiet piece of bouncy scales that went up and down. Jonas and Ingrid sat on barstools nearby, swirling their glasses and admiring his playing. The sight of them made Eva’s heart swell with warmth. She loved them, this group of hers, these amazing travellers of time and space. She loved nothing more in this world than to be with them. 

“So Jonas,” Eva heard Ingrid say as she grew near, “Why didn’t Grieg just go to heaven? Why would he still be hanging around here?”

“Um…” Jonas took a large gulp of whiskey and cleared his throat. “Well, maybe he lost his way. Or he didn’t know he was dead? Or his soul wasn’t at peace, or he had some unfinished work to do, or he wanted to watch over someone--I mean, there’s all sorts of reasons.

“Hmm…” Ingrid nodded thoughtfully. Then she caught sight of Eva and leapt up to hug her. “Hey, honey!”

“Hi, Ingrid!” Eva hugged her back.

“How was your trip?” Ingrid whispered into her ear. “Or, did you decide not to remember, again?”  
“I--I--” Eva froze. _Did Ingrid remember? Did she secretly hate her? Was she waiting for a reason to lash out at her?_ “I--don’t know,” she whispered. “I--who am I? Do you know?”

“Oh, Eva.” Ingrid wrapped an arm around her shoulder. When she spoke again, she seemed far off, as though slightly beyond herself and her mortal body. “You’re my sister...and my lover...and my daughter...and my best friend!” She pulled Eva close again.

Eva felt as though she might weep with relief. So Ingrid knew, and she did not hate her…perhaps this relationship, this  _ dynamic  _ that they all shared together could be saved after all…

“Or maybe there isn’t any heaven,” Jonas mused, completely unaware of Ingrid and Eva’s conversation. “I mean, that’s actually pretty likely, so…”

Eva laughed. She reached out to hug Jonas too. “Do you remember when we used to go up to your treehouse, and look at the stars through your telescope?” she asked him, smiling a bit at the good parts of the memory.

Jonas blinked at her, confused. “I don’t--I don’t think that’s happened yet,” he said. 

Eva felt her stomach clench.  _ He did not know? How does he not know? And does that mean--he does not know about everything else? _

Isak’s music was slowly growing louder, emboldening her. Eva pushed her fears and apprehension. “Dance with me,” she said to Jonas. 

He shrugged. “Okay,” he said. 

He clasped one of her hands, and placed his other hand on her waist. Eva took his hand and placed hers on his shoulder, and the two of them waltzed in a small circle around the floor of the bar. He was so close to  _ her,  _ and yet so far away, so unaware of what she was, what she had done. Eva felt that feeling building up in her stomach, so much that she thought she might scream if she didn’t let it out somehow--

“Do you ever think about having kids?” Eva blurted out suddenly, wishing for  _ any  _ form of connection, soul-baring.

Jonas blinked. “Uh--” he swallowed. “Um, no. Or, I don’t know. I mean, I guess in the abstract, yeah, but--I don’t really make a lot down at AS Oslo Sporveier, so...what about you? Does photography pay well?”

Eva laughed a little at his stumbling and dumbfounded response to the question. She began to answer, but then Ingrid interrupted.

“They had kids, you know,” she said. “Sisters.” 

“Weird,” Isak said. He kept playing.

And suddenly, it was all too much for Eva. The knowledge of what she had done, or what she was about to do to her friends, the people she loved most in the world, overwhelmed her. She could no longer bear to be here, to have them look at her as though nothing was wrong, as though she was innocent, and to know the great storm that they had coming, the storm that  _ she  _ was the cause of. She could not, she could not, she could  _ NOT-- _

Eva broke away from Jonas and ran away from the piano, the bar, the glasses of whiskey. From her friends, and all the life she’d known before. It was over, it was  _ ruined,  _ it was the end of everything she had, and she did not know where she could go from here, but she knew she could not stay.

As she left, she heard Ingrid speak.

“That’s really pretty,” she said. “You’re a really good piano player, Isak.”

“Thanks,” Isak laughed. “I practice a lot.”

The bells jingled behind Eva as she left that bar at the end of the world for the last time, and entered the mysterious, somehow-beyond.


	12. epilogue: the wind and rain

The whiskey bottle was empty by the time the shop girl had finished her story. Eva’s head felt thick and fuzzy, and her eyes burned. She felt strangely uneasy, as though the story she had been told was not a story any person should have heard. But it was in her mind now, and there was no way to get it out. 

Somehow, during that time, Eva had acquired a new camera too. She slung it over her shoulder as she stood up. “Well, thank you for the whiskey,” she said to the shop girl, Ingrid. “What do I owe you for this?”

“What?” Ingrid looked unfocused. Then she saw the camera, and her eyes flashed back to reality. “Oh, nothing dear. Think of it as a gift. From me.”

“Are you s--” Eva started, but stopped. There was something about the girl’s gaze, so fixed and focused into Eva’s own eyes, that gave her no doubt that she  _ was  _ sure. “T--thank you,” she said.

And so Eva left the shop with her brand new camera, the words of Ingrid’s story still buzzing in her mind. 

 

Ingrid watched the girl leave the shop, the bell tinkling softly as the door shut behind her. She hurried forward and flipped the sign from ÅPEN to LUKKET. Then, she began to clean up the place for the evening. 

As she cleaned, she hummed to herself a song that her great-grandmother had taught her. It went like this:

 

_ THERE WERE TWO SISTERS WHO LIVED BY THE SEA _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ AND THE YOUNGER ONE LOVED A MAN IN THE TREES _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ BUT THE MAN BROKE HER HEART LIKE HE DIDN’T CARE _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ THE SISTER RAN HER FINGERS THROUGH HIS HAIR _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ SO THE YOUNGER GOT DRUNK ON WHISKEY AND WINE _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ SCREAMED HIS NAME AND IT ECHOED THROUGH THE PINES _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ AND SHE PUSHED HER SISTER IN THE RIVER TO DROWN _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ WATCHED HER COLDLY AS SHE FLOATED DOWN _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ AND SHE FLOATED TILL SHE CAME TO THE MILLER’S POND _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ DEAD ON THE WATER LIKE A GOLDEN SWAN _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ AND THE MILLER PULLED HER OUT WITH A RUSTY FISHING HOOK _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ DREW THAT FAIR MAID FROM THE COLD COLD BROOK, CRYIN’ _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ AND HE LEFT HER BONES ON THE BANKS TO DRY _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ LEFT HER BONES THERE RIGHT UNDER THE SKY, CRYIN’ _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ AND ALONG THE ROAD CAME A FIDDLER FAIR _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ FOUND HER BONES JUST A LYING THERE, CRYIN' _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ AND HE MADE A LITTLE FIDDLE OF HER BREAST BONE _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ MADE A LITTLE FIDDLE OF HER BREAST BONE, CRYIN’ _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ AND HE STRUNG HIS FIDDLE BOW WITH HER LONG BROWN HAIR _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ STRUNG HIS FIDDLE BOW WITH HER LONG BROWN HAIR, CRYIN’ _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

_ BUT THE ONLY TUNE THAT THE FIDDLE WOULD PLAY WAS _

_ OH, THE WIND AND RAIN _

_ THE ONLY TUNE THAT THE FIDDLE WOULD PLAY WAS _

_ OH, THE DREADFUL WIND AND RAIN _

 

Ingrid finished her cleaning. She gave the fiddle above her counter a long, thoughtful look, and then turned out the lights. 

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a ride! Thank you all for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr @shaysbian!!


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